Review Insights · App Store
Monarch: Budget & Track Money
Monarch Money, Inc. · 97,390 ratings · ★ 4.9
4.9
★★★★★
97,390 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 25 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"accounts"
8 negative reviews mention this · 32% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Doesn’t stay connected. The simply cannot stay connected to accounts. It’s really frustrating." - Winchermunster
2
"money"
8 negative reviews mention this · 32% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Bad data, confusing interface. Accounts require at least weekly sign in. Connection to data is regularly lost. And when I reauthenticate, I’m told my credentials are good but there are no compatible accounts. Impossible to use under these conditions. If my data comes t…" - Motsumi
3
"features"
7 negative reviews mention this · 28% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Glorified spreadsheets. Initially I held this app in much higher regard because of the syncing features and insights. However, after a couple of weeks, all my institutions except for Fidelity have blocked access. You can try to sync manually but it’s a painful pro…" - i.knight7000
4
"subscription"
7 negative reviews mention this · 28% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Charged after cancelling, overpriced, basic. I used Monarch for a few days and made a spreadsheet in Excel with help from chatgpt that was far better and cost me nothing. Then when I canceled the subscription before the free trial ended, I was charged anyway. There’s no need to use an…" - ComfortableTop
5
"free"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Not any better than free apps. A lot of the functionality you would think it doesn’t have or doesn’t work smoothly. Poor syncing, can’t sync with some common account types, duplicates accounts, duplicates transactions, lots of manual overrides needed, can only do some th…" - efhlfukhefrnekr
6
"support"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Inaccurate Info. Incorrectly showed holdings and returns (showed losses on strong increase days). Support was very slow to respond and not helpful at all. Cancelled after 6 months for a refund. Look elsewhere and save the headache." - meatsauce30
7
"monarch"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Charged after cancelling, overpriced, basic. I used Monarch for a few days and made a spreadsheet in Excel with help from chatgpt that was far better and cost me nothing. Then when I canceled the subscription before the free trial ended, I was charged anyway. There’s no need to use an…" - ComfortableTop
8
"doesn"
4 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Doesn’t stay connected. The simply cannot stay connected to accounts. It’s really frustrating." - Winchermunster
9
"better"
4 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Not any better than free apps. A lot of the functionality you would think it doesn’t have or doesn’t work smoothly. Poor syncing, can’t sync with some common account types, duplicates accounts, duplicates transactions, lots of manual overrides needed, can only do some th…" - efhlfukhefrnekr
10
"sync"
4 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Not any better than free apps. A lot of the functionality you would think it doesn’t have or doesn’t work smoothly. Poor syncing, can’t sync with some common account types, duplicates accounts, duplicates transactions, lots of manual overrides needed, can only do some th…" - efhlfukhefrnekr
11
"account"
4 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Doesn’t stay connected. The simply cannot stay connected to accounts. It’s really frustrating." - Winchermunster
12
"transactions"
4 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Not any better than free apps. A lot of the functionality you would think it doesn’t have or doesn’t work smoothly. Poor syncing, can’t sync with some common account types, duplicates accounts, duplicates transactions, lots of manual overrides needed, can only do some th…" - efhlfukhefrnekr
📋 All 25 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Es de pago
No puedes obtener prueba sin otorgar información de pago
Doesn’t stay connected
The simply cannot stay connected to accounts. It’s really frustrating.
Inaccurate Info
Incorrectly showed holdings and returns (showed losses on strong increase days). Support was very slow to respond and not helpful at all. Cancelled after 6 months for a refund. Look elsewhere and save the headache.
Unable to keep accounts synced
I really want to give five stars but can't because they cannot keep accounts synced.
When you contact help they ask you to resign in which works 1/4 of the time and the others support responds back with canned messages like are you sure you own the account??
Mean while their sync status page will show issues with the major providers.
You can do better.
When you contact help they ask you to resign in which works 1/4 of the time and the others support responds back with canned messages like are you sure you own the account??
Mean while their sync status page will show issues with the major providers.
You can do better.
Bad data, confusing interface
Accounts require at least weekly sign in. Connection to data is regularly lost. And when I reauthenticate, I’m told my credentials are good but there are no compatible accounts. Impossible to use under these conditions.
If my data comes through, then I have a cluttered, confusing interface to fight through before anything useful can be realized. What a mess. Don’t waste your money.
If my data comes through, then I have a cluttered, confusing interface to fight through before anything useful can be realized. What a mess. Don’t waste your money.
Charged after cancelling, overpriced, basic
I used Monarch for a few days and made a spreadsheet in Excel with help from chatgpt that was far better and cost me nothing. Then when I canceled the subscription before the free trial ended, I was charged anyway. There’s no need to use an app like this. You need to have control of your finances. I like entering each charge because it makes me connect with the charge emotionally and decide if it was worth it and that really helps my spending… having it automated for you like this app detaches you from your spending habits. The other features of the app are very basic as well.
Illegally billing to avoid apples cut
This ghetto ratchet pathetic app deserves to be banned from the App Store. They are forcing you to go off app into a web Brower to unsubscribe or update any payment info. Making any changes to payment virtually impossible and avoiding apples cut of the $$$$. Take this app down now. It is horrible and violating your terms of service.
Updates
Why am I forced to update the app to use it? None of my other apps require updates this often, including my banking apps, so it isn’t a security thing. Please stop forcing me to update this thing.
Trash doesn't work
As soon as my free trial ended and I gave them money, half of my accounts stopped working, and were unfixable despite all support told me to do. It defeated the entire purpose of the app.
Terrible
I’m gonna help you save money by making you spend it on a subscription. Great idea stupid.
Deceptive Practices
Don’t waste your time with Monarch. I used Monarch for 6 months and they sent me a free trial offer to try their new Plus account. I did the trial and decided the features of the Plus account did not justify an additional $100/yr. They told me I couldn’t go back to my already paid for subscription without having to pay for an entire year again. I still had 6 months left on my subscription and instead of downgrading my account to the plan I had already paid for, they cancelled my whole account and told me I would have to buy it again. Horrible customer service.
Starts working fine, then….
Starts working fine, then accounts stop updating, the bot blames plaid and the financial institution. But no fix.
Cancel my subscription - poor customer support and disappointing business practices.
I’ve been a Monarch customer for several years, but I’ve decided to cancel my subscription. Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a decline in the service and feature improvements.
Things got worse in April when they introduced a two-tier system that wasn’t available to Apple subscribers. To add insult to injury, when you switch to direct billing, you can’t access the monthly subscription for the higher package. Instead, you’re forced to go straight to the $200-per-year option (plus tax). The base package is still available as either monthly or yearly.
Overall, it feels like they’re trying to extract more money from customers while offering fewer features, and that’s disappointing. I’m not sure what’s going on inside the company, but it looks like they don’t have their business in order. It’s too bad, because they started well, but it’s time to move on to a different service.
Things got worse in April when they introduced a two-tier system that wasn’t available to Apple subscribers. To add insult to injury, when you switch to direct billing, you can’t access the monthly subscription for the higher package. Instead, you’re forced to go straight to the $200-per-year option (plus tax). The base package is still available as either monthly or yearly.
Overall, it feels like they’re trying to extract more money from customers while offering fewer features, and that’s disappointing. I’m not sure what’s going on inside the company, but it looks like they don’t have their business in order. It’s too bad, because they started well, but it’s time to move on to a different service.
I feel like I wasted my money
I started using Monarch in January. I didn’t use every feature, but I did use the budget and the goals feature. I just wanted to make sure I understood what was going in and coming out of my account. It worked great for me. It helped me feel a little less anxious about my finances.
Now, like any other ill-advised company, it seems that Monarch has decided to focus fully on AI. It seems like every week I find a new transaction that was missed by the rules feature. I constantly find duplicate transactions that my budget look like I spent twice what I thought I had. The worst is when I transfer money between accounts. It thinks that I’m getting more income, even though it’s pretty clear that $300 came out of my savings into my checking.
The trustworthiness of a financial tool to give you good data seems like it would be vital. Unfortunately, I find myself directly, checking the numbers and transactions in my banking app because I have stopped trusting Monarch to tell me the truth.
Worst of all, it seems that Monarch opted me into AI analysis of my finances even though I specifically hit cancel every single time I accidentally clicked on that stupid AI logo. I don’t trust the slop. I don’t want them to use my data to train their models. I can’t trust the basic features. I can’t trust them to not mine my data. I can’t trust the budget feature. Why am I paying for this?
I have contacted support and added suggestions to their built in suggestions feature, but at this point I’m giving up on Monarch. I feel like I wasted my money.
Now, like any other ill-advised company, it seems that Monarch has decided to focus fully on AI. It seems like every week I find a new transaction that was missed by the rules feature. I constantly find duplicate transactions that my budget look like I spent twice what I thought I had. The worst is when I transfer money between accounts. It thinks that I’m getting more income, even though it’s pretty clear that $300 came out of my savings into my checking.
The trustworthiness of a financial tool to give you good data seems like it would be vital. Unfortunately, I find myself directly, checking the numbers and transactions in my banking app because I have stopped trusting Monarch to tell me the truth.
Worst of all, it seems that Monarch opted me into AI analysis of my finances even though I specifically hit cancel every single time I accidentally clicked on that stupid AI logo. I don’t trust the slop. I don’t want them to use my data to train their models. I can’t trust the basic features. I can’t trust them to not mine my data. I can’t trust the budget feature. Why am I paying for this?
I have contacted support and added suggestions to their built in suggestions feature, but at this point I’m giving up on Monarch. I feel like I wasted my money.
Doesn’t work if you use credit cards
This app is much more like a money spend tracker than an actual budget. It’s passive, it lets you work off of projected income (so it will let you bounce a check, because you never know how much money you have available at any given moment). Worst of all, it’s not really compatible with credit card usage. Let’s say you spend $300 on groceries on a credit card. You categorize the expense, but it never tells you how much you have available to pay on your credit card. It’s bonkers. Not a real budgeting app, imo. It’s fine if you want to see like, how much do I spend on groceries every month, but not really designed for managing money.
Charged me without warning!
I had downloaded this app and plugged everything into it but never really made any sense of the way the app flows. It is about 3 days behind the other budget app I was comparing to. I was going to cancel because I do not like the UI at all here compared to others. I would love a refund of my yearly subscription like you said you’d warn me before the charge. Seems predatory.
Developer spams reviews
Developer spams reviews
“All” only goes back 18 months.
“Amazon sync and our enhanced referral program”
“Are you sure?”
“A new home for hidden transactions”
“Enjoying Monarch?”
“An update to hidden transactions”
Start 2026 ahead of the game.
Keeps resetting to the dashboard view. Unable to use password apps.
Meet your new AI assistant.
Identified
March 08, 2026 at 10:15 AM
We have identified an issue with processing upcoming invoices. Processing subscription payments may be delayed.
“New personal and shared views” spam blocks app, making it useless.
“Enjoying Monarch?”
“All” only goes back 18 months.
“Amazon sync and our enhanced referral program”
“Are you sure?”
“A new home for hidden transactions”
“Enjoying Monarch?”
“An update to hidden transactions”
Start 2026 ahead of the game.
Keeps resetting to the dashboard view. Unable to use password apps.
Meet your new AI assistant.
Identified
March 08, 2026 at 10:15 AM
We have identified an issue with processing upcoming invoices. Processing subscription payments may be delayed.
“New personal and shared views” spam blocks app, making it useless.
“Enjoying Monarch?”
Poor for investment
Good for expenses. Very poor for investment. To get any meaningful look at investment you have to pay extra and separate. Scam in my opinion
Doubled CC transactions?
Enjoying the app but my credit card transactions are showing up twice for every purchase in the cash flow view of the app. Going to accounts everything looks correct. My review can change if this is fixed but if the cash flow and budgeting are inaccurate then what’s the point of spending money on this app. Please fix! I want to use your features
Took money after canceling during free subscription!
Have to put your card info in to start the 7 day free subscription to even use the app. I hated the app so I unsubscribed on the apple subscriptions and yet after the 7 days it took my money! Requested money back and no response!
No customer service
In today’s day and age you need to have a reliable way to get in contact with your customer service besides resorting to begging an AI thing to get you a real person and having to message them on Instagram
Not any better than free apps
A lot of the functionality you would think it doesn’t have or doesn’t work smoothly. Poor syncing, can’t sync with some common account types, duplicates accounts, duplicates transactions, lots of manual overrides needed, can only do some things on web. Better of just sticking with Empower Personal Capital since it’s free and has the basically the same bugs.
Glorified spreadsheets
Initially I held this app in much higher regard because of the syncing features and insights. However, after a couple of weeks, all my institutions except for Fidelity have blocked access. You can try to sync manually but it’s a painful process that requires you to repeat the same steps multiple times. All for the app to disconnect from the institutions in another week or so. Without the automated syncing, it’s not worth the hassle.
Privacy and policy
FYI they share your data with Facebook/Meta. You must go through the dark UX patterns of disconnecting it on the Facebook side if you don’t want that information automatically shared.
I would appreciate better policy off the bat.
I would appreciate better policy off the bat.
Works 99%
Loads of features bells and whistles but unfortunately messes up syncing which kind of makes it pointless. You need to go back and manually change everything after you resync otherwise all your history becomes incorrect. Also limited investment tools.
Sentiment summary
99%
Positive (4-5★)
1%
Neutral (3★)
1%
Negative (1-2★)